GARDNER: ““Well, I would be careful of what the CIA is being accused of saying. And I think that was clear in a briefing yesterday.I can’t get into the details of it, but I would just be very careful about what the CIA does and doesn’t believe.”

A CIA briefing on Tuesday left senators raging at Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with Sen. Bob Corker declaring a jury would find him “guilty” of murdering journalist Jamal Kashoggi and Sen. Lindsey Graham asserting the Trump administration must be “willfully blind” not to hold MBS, as he his known, accountable for the killing of Khashoggi.

The unbridled anger toward MBS after a meeting between top Senate leaders and CIA Director Gina Haspel suggests that the chamber will move swiftly to punish the Saudi regime in the coming days. Republican senators in particularly were biting in their assessments of both MBS and the Trump administration, which has declined to assert that the Saudi prince ordered Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey in October.

Corker (R-Tenn.), the Senate Foreign Relations chairman, said that there is “zero question that the crown prince directed the murder.”

It’s not known if Gardner attended the CIA briefing, and his office didn’t issue a comment on the CIA’s Khashoggi briefing.

It appears that Gardner and Trump are the only prominent Washington politicians who are skeptical of the reported CIA conclusion.

Gardner won’t return calls from the Colorado Times Recorder seeking to know why he doubts the CIA’s conclusion.

Gardner was commenting on other matters today. Shortly after Corker and Graham made their comments, Gardner tweeted:

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I swear, it's like his motto is never speak about anything his (supposed) constituents what to talk about. He just says "Look! Squirrel!" It's like whatever spine he had has been totally removed and now he is the dictionary definition of pathetic.

Stay the course Senator. They'll thank you. The same way they thanked Mike Coffman.

I don't care about Khashoggi. He was a Whabbist who believed in democratic Sharia and got killed by the Whabbists who believed in absolute monarchy Sharia.

Trump's not a bad president for not caring about Khashoggi.

If Democrats and the media really wanted to destroy Trump's reputation they would emphasize the fact that we're enabling and perpetuating a genocide in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is slowly starving an entire country to death, using US infrastrure and US weapons sales.

16 million are at risk of starvation. 85,000 CHILDREN have already starved to death or died of hunger related illnesses. Hey media- want to sink Trumps reputation? Show the pictures of the Yemeni children he's starving to death.

Trump is buddy buddy with the mass-murdering Saudis, but the press wants to focus on one dead foreign journalist.

Because the dirty secret is that Democrats and their media buddies favor the Saudi alliance too, so they're keeping the ongoing starvation of Yemen relatively quiet.

No one would care then either.Yimen? What and where's that? We can't be expected to fix the world when we got shit to lean into right here.

You, however, are kind of sick.
Trump is not a bad president for not caring about every death.
He's a bad president because his response to Kashoggi's torture and execution was indifference because so many Americans could get rich from selling more weapons to the Kingdom.
Its like Iran Contrac without the secrecy and lying. And, of course, a different President and VP

"Democrats and their media buddies favor the Saudi alliance too, so they're keeping the ongoing starvation of Yemen relatively quiet."

I don't know what "media buddies" you are talking about. The Washington Post alone has had over 30 articles in the last month with mention of the Yemen war. There has been coverage of its starvation, its refugee displacement, the Trump-led US support of the war, the Saudi effort in the war, the UN negotiations, and the like. Associated Press had five or six in the past week.

At the Colorado Independent (and other outlets that picked it up), Mike Littwin pointed out "In a 63-37 vote, 14 Republicans stood with 49 Democrats to pass a resolution that could force Trump to end assistance to the Saudi-based coalition fighting in Yemen." That is EVERY Democrat in the Senate.

I appreciate the outrage against the horrors of the war — but can you focus on those who began the war, those who maintain it, and those who actively oppose ending the war rather than "Democrats and their media buddies" who you inaccurately describe as favoring the Saudi alliance?

I salute your reality check on the claim that Democrats don't care about the war in Yemen. Given the word salad of arguments made by "Democat" I suspect it is either a Russian employee or a domestic "useful idiot".

Gardner would not have been at the briefing with Haskel. That meeting was "Gang of Eight" only – top Republican and Democrat on each of the Intel and Foreign Relations committees plus leaders of both chambers. In typical fashion, this does not actually equal eight people.

A discussion of the war in Yemen is not complete if one fails to understand the dynamic between Saudi Sunnis and Houthi Shiites supported by Iran. There is also the matter of thousands of people killed by the Houthis in their rebellion and the rockets they launched into Saudi Arabia.

There is the issue of the vastly different portions of Yemen being forcibly aligned by the North some decades ago. The southern part was British Aden and associated states until 1967.

None of this excuses the reactions, even genocide, from the Sunni Saudis and Emirates. But the war does become more clear in knowing that there is evil on both sides.